Chaos 101
by 23Murasaki
Summary: Mr. Rayne is so nice and smart and charming, but most importantly he seems like he really listens when she talks. And he teaches her magic. (Or: Ethan teaches Willow some petty spells and a good time is had by all. Why should Ripper be the only one who gets an impressionable teenage girl to mentor?) A side story for So It Is (re)Written


Willow sits on the stool and tries not to kick her legs. She's being treated like a grown-up, and for the love of everything she's going to act like one. Mr. Rayne – everyone calls him Ethan but it takes an effort to not call Giles Mr. Giles so that's not really happening right now – has a kettle on for tea and is tossing around Xeroxed papers trying to find one in particular. Every paper he throws hovers in the air.

It's probably silly of her, really silly of her, to go complaining to him that she feels so not-noticed, because she is noticed. She's got friends. She's got Oz, even. She just feels a bit like she's yelling into the void when she talks to them, and somehow they always have something more important to do, and sometimes they all understand things that she really doesn't. She's told Mr. Rayne everything, and he's told her he has a way to help.

"Got it!" he announces happily, waving a sheet. The extras drop onto a neat pile. "This is what you need, take a look."

"Okay," she says. Mr. Rayne has an infectious smile and very dark eyes and when he's not scary he's brilliant. There. She said it, or thought it at least. He's brilliant. "It's… a glamour?" She only has a cursory grasp on those. Giles's books don't really go into detail, and she's not sure she can just search magic+glamour online and find anything useful.

"Yes! I suppose you haven't had much of a chance to read up on them yet?" he asks.

"No," she admits. "There's nothing in Giles's library…"

"I'd suppose not," says Mr. Rayne with a theatrical sigh. "It's not his style, really."

"Nope. It's your style, though!" Willow says encouragingly. Mr. Rayne pats her on the head across the counter.

"So it is," he says. Her cheeks burn, and she quickly turns her attention to the printout.

The glamour seems like a fairly simple one, though she hasn't got anything to compare it to. One of the books did touch on using glamours to obscure your identity, and this one doesn't go that far at least. It's not for containing or obscuring, just for… shifting, a little. She likes the idea. It wouldn't be permanent or anything, so her parents wouldn't need to worry, and if she made it permanent then, well, she could probably glamour it back the other way, couldn't she. The idea makes her giggle.

"Your style too, maybe?" Mr. Rayne asks, sliding her a teacup full of sweet milk tea. "I didn't mean to be presumptuous, of course, but you'd struck me as the sort who would appreciate a chance to experiment with no lasting effects."

"Y-you're not being presumptuous," she says. "I think it's—it's really interesting. But, but is it really okay to use magic for something… something so…" She trails off, not sure where she's really going with that, but Mr. Rayne grins like he understands what she means anyway.

"Is it really okay to use magic for something little?" he finishes. "Or maybe petty? My dear girl, of course it is. It's the safest way to practice, too. You could jump right in and summon a demon in a public restroom, but even I would tell you that's potentially dangerous."

"I'm not scared of dangerous!" she blusters. She's very scared of dangerous, but she can't be because she's friends with Buffy, and Buffy's the Slayer, so Buffy's friends have to be brave. Her teacup is shaking in her hands anyway.

"I'm not calling you a coward," Mr. Rayne says soothingly. "I'm just saying, there's no point in unnecessary risks. Start small, then you'll have a better handle on the big stuff. And with friends like yours, you're sure to need the big stuff soon…"

"Buffy's gonna need the big stuff," she says.

"And you wouldn't want to screw up then, would you?" Mr. Rayne sounds actually serious, like when he fought that demon in the library. She shakes her head, trying very hard not to think of what could happen if something went wrong. "Good. And we may as well make the practice, fun, no?"

It is fun, if not really the fun she's used to. She spends hours on end sitting in Mr. Rayne's motel room with a hand mirror and the glamour spell, making her hair look different colors. After a while, Mr. Rayne takes a seat beside her and turns his eyebrows pink, which makes her loose her concentration and burst out laughing. When she's calmer, which takes a while, he grins at her really wide.

"Say, Willow. Can you keep a secret?"

"Absolutely!" Well, she mostly can. She's been pretty good about keeping her meetings with Mr. Rayne secret, anyway, though no one's really asked where she's been sneaking off to. Mr. Rayne puts on an expression of fake-seriousness, opens his eyes really wide and furrows his brow.

"You see, my dear girl, I…" She giggles again at his tone, and he drapes himself half over the counter. "I have just as much grey hair as Rupert!" His hair is dark brown, but as she watches part of it shades deep purple, then green-gold, then outrageously shiny silver before going back to brown. "So, what are you thinking?"

"Purple," she says. "I'm thinking purple."

"Royal," says Mr. Rayne. "I like it."

"I don't have any clothes to go with it, though," she says. "Can I glamour those too?" And Mr. Rayne laughs so hard his shoulders shake and tells her he's got just the spell for that, too. He even gives her his old jacket as a finishing touch.

She goes to school as early as she can the next day and hides in the bathroom until her hair looks purple and her boots look black and her skirt looks short and she's gotten all the lipstick on her mouth properly and Mr. Rayne's old jacket isn't wrinkled. Her mother would definitely consider this a cry for help, she thinks, almost giddily, as she surveys her handiwork in the mirror, and then she heads out to face the day.

She keeps expecting to regret it, but she doesn't. Xander walks into a wall staring at her, boys who usually trip her up and make jokes at her expense get out of her way. Cordelia goes all stare-y for a moment.

"It's not Halloween, Willow," she says finally, as all her stupid friends giggle and sneer. "Did you know? That happens in the fall, you see." She sticks her hands in the pockets of the jacket and thinks about the folders full of spells and rituals. Mr. Rayne has to have something on hand for revenge, petty revenge.

"Oh? So you're dressed up like an—overpriced escort just for fun?"

The words are out of her mouth before she can think too much, and she doesn't mean it, she doesn't really mean it at all, but she's angry and the glamours she's wearing are making her fingers itch. Petty, she thinks. Today is for being petty. And Cordelia's pretty hairdo dissolves into a tangled mess while her friends laugh. They'd laugh at anyone, she thinks. Cordelia is supposed to be one of them! And with that thought she gives them all canary yellow cartoon character shirts and leaves them to shriek at each other as she heads off.

"New, uh, look?" Buffy asks, eyebrows raised.

"Yep!"

"Very punk rock," says Oz. She kisses him good morning before she can panic about it properly, loops her arm through Buffy's and marches off to class. And she only loses her balance a little trying to drape herself in a chair like Mr. Rayne third period she's got it down, anyway, and by lunch people are apologizing when the get in her way even when she's walking on her own, and in sixth period Ms. Calendar shows her her how to touch up her lipstick and then after school Giles shatters a teacup at the sight of her and stammers like he doesn't know what to do, while Buffy laughs and Oz comments he could change genres for this.

All in all, it's a good day.


End file.
